Everybody Cut, Everybody Cut! Jeremy Kushnier & Jennifer Laura Thompson Reunite 20 Years After Footloose

Twenty years ago, they were the hottest thing in denim. When Jeremy Kushnier and Jennifer Laura Thompson took to the stage of the Richard Rodgers Theatre on opening night of Footloose on October 22, 1998, they were not only making their Broadway debuts, they were ushering in a new wave of musicals based on popular popcorn movies.

These days, the stars have graduated to parent roles—he as stubborn King Basilius in Head Over Heels, she as grieving Cynthia Murphy in Dear Evan Hansen—and have built healthy stage careers.

“We’re still kicking it,” Thompson said, when Broadway.com brought the pair back together for a reunion photo and video shoot, wearing her original red cowboy boots from the show. “I’m proud to say.”

When they were cast in the stage adaptation of the hit 1984 movie Footloose, Thompson was coming off a national tour of the acclaimed Lincoln Center Theatre Carousel, playing Julie Jordan, and Kushnier was literally just off the bus from Canada…with nowhere to stay.

“After the first day of the audition, I told [casting director] Barry Moss that I was going home,” Kushnier remembers. “He was like, ‘No, you can’t go home. We’ve got to find you somewhere to stay.’ So, I stayed in this random apartment in Barry Moss’ building. He was like, ‘Never tell anybody this.’ I tell everybody now!”

On day two, Moss paired Kushnier up with Thompson, and rest is Broadway history. “You had a purple tie on,” Thompson reminds Kushnier. “Or it was a vest maybe. And a jacket. You were dressed to win.”

The newbies stayed with Footloose for the show’s entire 709-performance run, singing their signature love duet “Almost Paradise” at countless promotional events (“a billion times,” jokes Kushnier). When it ended, the crapshoot of creating a career became real; Thompson stepped into a Tony-nominated turn in Urinetown, while Kushnier landed the lead in The Rhythm Club, a swinging Broadway-bound musical that closed out of town.

“I try to tell this to all the young people I work with,” he says. “As soon as the show’s done, you start all over again, as if you never did anything.”

With six credits each to their names, both Kushnier and Thompson have become regulars on the Broadway scene, but they still look back on their early start with fondness.

“When were doing the photo shoot here,” Kushnier says, “and I was looking into Jen’s eyes… It never goes away. It makes me sort of cheer up a little bit.”

“Aw,” Thompson smiles. “Look at you.”